cooling related (or 'why I think my computer has a split personality')

[DVD_NDN]

hi

once again I come to all of you to present an issue I am having with my computer, in hopes somebody can 'dumb it down' for me so I can get a grip on whats going on.

As noted in the current (At the time of my writing this) poll - it is summer, and it can indeed present its own problems.

My computer appears to be shutting itself off at will. Ok maybe not 'at will' - I thought, until last night - that the reason was the power supply was overheating... as the top of my case was Quite warm to the touch.... so wait several minutes... 15 minutes to half an hour... and it still wont respond (power button wont work) - so I found that I must physically unplug the power, for a long enough period that the light on the motherboard turns off.

I plug it back in, and 'voila' it works... unless its still too hot, in which case it just turns off again.

Alright, as I mentioned I believed it was all about the power supply. My naiveté was burst however when it happened again last night, and my power supply was 'just fine'. My hard drives however (one more so than the other - indeed the one I Was using - encoding video at the time) were right hot.

I have found that when I turn the computer back on, I am brought to CMOS I believe it is, and I am informed that my comuter is not running at the proper frequency?? now THAT struck me as Forked right up.

SO - my questions, oh enlightened ones... are as follows.

What 'would' cause a scenario such as I've described?
What possible damage can I (or am I) be doing to either my hardware or software?
(software shouldn't be an issue however as it CAN be fixed easily I would think)
IS there a range (generally for all computers) that my temp should not go into?
UNRELATED - Why would my computer, upon startup, tell me I have only 256Ram (at that first screen when you reboot... c'mon guys, you know what screen)

My case has only one fan. yes. pray for me.
I did however remove the side cover. I know... I'm probably doing more damage than good... best I can do guys... and I blast it every morning before work with compressed air, just to keep those evil dust bunnies from attacking the technological mecca in my apartment (Their war has been going on for years, epic story, really....)

Tech specs:

CPU(s)
Number of CPUs 1
Name AMD Athlon XP
Code Name Barton
Specification AMD Athlon(TM) XP 3000+
Family / Model / Stepping 6 A 0
Extended Family / Model 7 A
Package Socket A
Technology 0.13 µ
Supported Instructions Sets MMX, Extended MMX, 3DNow!, Extended 3DNow!, SSE
CPU Clock Speed 2166.5 MHz
Clock multiplier x 13.0
Front Side Bus Frequency 166.7 MHz
Bus Speed 333.3 MHz
L1 Data Cache 64 KBytes, 2-way set associative, 64 Bytes line size
L1 Instruction Cache 64 KBytes, 2-way set associative, 64 Bytes line size
L2 Cache 512 KBytes, 16-way set associative, 64 Bytes line size
L2 Speed 2166.5 MHz (Full)
L2 Location On Chip
L2 Data Prefetch Logic yes
L2 Bus Width 64 bits

Mainboard and chipset
Motherboard manufacturer ASUSTeK Computer INC.
Motherboard model A7V8X-X, REV 1.xx
BIOS vendor Award Software, Inc.
BIOS revision ASUS A7V8X-X ACPI BIOS Revision 1012
BIOS release date 07/22/2004
Chipset VIA KT400A rev. 80
Southbridge VIA VT8235 rev. 0
Sensor chip FFFF
Graphic Interface AGP
AGP Status enabled, rev. 3.5
AGP Data Transfert Rate 8x
AGP Max Rate 8x
AGP Side Band Addressing supported, enabled
AGP Aperture Size 64 MBytes

Memory
DRAM Type DDR-SDRAM
DRAM Size 1024 MBytes
DRAM Frequency 166.7 MHz
FSBRAM 1:1
DRAM Interleave 4-way
CAS# Latency 2.5 clocks
RAS# to CAS# 5 clocks
RAS# Precharge 4 clocks
Cycle Time (TRAS) 9 clocks
# of memory modules 2
Module 0 Corsair DDR-SDRAM PC3200 - 512 MBytes
Module 1 Corsair DDR-SDRAM PC3200 - 512 MBytes

Software
Windows version Microsoft Windows XP Workstation Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
DirectX version 9.0c

(yes, I already know its time to upgrade, but I'm 'financially 'embarrassed' as opposed to 'poor' and so I cannot afford it... think any rational person would choose to allow their computers state to sink to my level? Besides, the great dust bunny war has been a drain on the economy, and left waste to the infrastructure... ok, no that pats obviously BS)

[redwudz]

I would try to settle the issue of possible overheating first. When you computer first boots, click the 'Delete' key about once a second until you go to the BIOS screen. You should have a hardware monitoring page there that will display your CPU temps, fan speeds and power supply voltages. The instructions for moving around the pages are at the bottom.

If you do suspect overheat, (And those Barton's generally run fairly hot), leave the side panel off and direct a desk fan in there for some extra cooling and see if the shutdown situation improves. Let us know the CPU temp after running for about 10 minutes in BIOS mode.

Once you get that settled, try running Memtest 86 on your RAM memory. I would run it a hour or two for a through test. You can get Memtest here: http://www.memtest86.com/

If you have more than one RAM module, you might substitute them or pull one out and run with the other for a while. Then try the other by itself.

And it could still be a power supply problem. Unfortunately, the best way to test a PS is to try a different one. You might look on the side of the power supply and see what the wattage rating is. 200-250W would be on the low side. 300-350W should be fine. Let us know what it says. If the PS is blowing very hot air our when it's run a while, similar to a hair dryer, it's likely overloaded or undersized. Or if a sniff of the PS fan output smells of insulation overheating, also a bad sign.

A few other things to check when you have the side cover off. Reseat all your PCI cards and check the connectors for all devices.

[biviray]

Had same problems two weeks ago after using my system which is similar to yours after running six days continously for data recovery of a hard drive. Power supply fan had slowed down causing power supply to overheat; and 500gb SATA hdd without adequate ventilation overheated causing total system to overheat. Replaced power supply, added front fan to cool hdd and had to re-apply thermo-grease to cpu. Now everything including cpu is running cooler.

[Bjs]

biviray ... you meant "artic silver 5" ... didnt you ?

If you used ordinary thermal heat grease compound as used by older cpu's, your heading for trouble ... soon .

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DVD_NDN

Power system off , remove power , remove ram .
Insert one memory module into bank 0 , repower system , confirm amount shown .
Repeat using other memory module .

If both show correct amount , clean the memory slots onboard using a small stiff bristle brush .
Reinsert both , reconfirm max memory count .

Very rare , but memory slots can just quit ... a good clean helps .

It dosent help when the agp is so close to the memory lock tabs on that particular board either .

Run mem test tool from ms site ... or os may report error from memtest scan .

20 minutes is long enough .

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System is designed to shutdown to prevent damage ... check bios max temp is not set to lowest value , second highest is prefered .

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Remove cpu fan and heatsink , and get hold of artic silver 5 , to replace the crap thermal material ... and an after market heatsink and fan ... should drop temp by around 20 degree's .

Bartons do run hot .

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Hard drive :

If this drive that heats up is a dummy , not os drive , grab the manufacturers "new install" tools , and reformat it , the long way , not the quick format method ... it should run much cooler .

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Nothing less than 450watts psu for barton , their hungry suckers ... I own one .

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Blasting it with air everyday is not healthy ... consider investment in a filtered case fan with washable filter , which will draw clean air into system .

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If the room the pc is in gets warm enough you need to remove your top (shirt) , the room is far too hot for the pc ... a fan , forcing air into the system while the side cover is off will help ... but not recommended if you want the pc to last .

[Nelson37]

If you are certain that the POST test screen is telling you that there is only 256 MB of RAM, and this is NOT referring to the video card but the motherboard memory, there is the number one problem to solve. It is almost certainly NOT AT ALL "UNRELATED " to the rebooting issue.

If you are reporting different amount of RAM than that actually installed, this is a major issue.
The PC will NOT repeat NOT function normally in this condition.

Remove and Replace all RAM sticks. Test repeatedly. If problem does not re-occur, then it was dust or corrosion in the slot and/or loose chip. Also check RAM amount while in Windows on a regular basis. Yes, it can change on the fly, after being initially recognized correctly.

If it repeats - remove all but one stick, test repeatedly, rotate chips if necessary. Buy new chips if necessary.

Frequency issue - this indicates the PC's CPU and/or RAM is overclocked. Where did this PC come from, who built it? Remove the overclock and test. This may be causing the chips to malfunction.

Additional cooling is probably needed, I will post some of my recent solutions in the poll thread on cooling.

[redwudz]

I have gotten the 'overclock' warning before when I wasn't overclocking. In my case it was a bad RAM memory module. But overheating might also trigger this, depending on the BIOS and how it reports errors.

[handyguy]

Also in your bios you should have a screen that lets you determine what the computer should do when it gets too hot.

[TBoneit]

ASUS motherboards that have the boot process interrupted will throw that generic error about overclocking failed whether you are actually overclocked or not.

That is by design so that if you were oveclocking you have a easy path to fix the problem without opening the computer case and moving the clear cmos jumper.

[fLYtRap]

Should be enough to clean up old thermal grease on your CPU and heat sink and put some new one. You can use Antec Formula 5, its good about $10.00 for a tube.